yesterday i had my first encounter with nasty rude french people. three friends and i went to the movies to see Slumdog Millionaire (which, by the way, was excellent and brought back oh so many fond memories of meredith viera). none of us had any cash, so we all had to pay separately with credit cards. there was a middle aged french couple in line behind us who apparently just too anxious and impatient to wait their turn, and they very loudly asked the cashier what was taking so long. he replied that our credit cards were foreign and took a bit longer to process, which disgusted and outraged these french people, leading them to demand why foreigners were allowed in the movie theatre in the first place. this verbal exchange, mind you, was carried out in french, which everyone in my group could understand. we tried to retaliate, telling the man he was mechant (mean) and saying it was a free country, etc. their very mature response was to mock our attempts at speaking their own language. needless to say, it is most definitely people like them who give the french a bad name. the cashier was sympathetic to us and apologized for the mean jerks' meanness but unfortunately was unable to punch them in the face for us as we would have liked. the french are lucky that i don't hold grudges or else they'd be in big trouble.